Immaculata Adopts Online Alcohol Prevention Program

Posted on Aug 22, 2005

Immaculata University announced that all incoming first-year students would be asked to complete an online alcohol prevention program this fall. The program, AlcoholEduÂ® for College, is part of a comprehensive and proactive approach Immaculata is taking to ensure that students have the tools they need to make safe and healthy decisions about alcohol.
"High-risk drinking is a problem nationwide among college and university students," Sister Rose Harlan, dean of students, said. "Immaculata University is committed to getting ahead of the problem to make sure our students have a positive experience here â€“ both academically and socially â€“ and once they have graduated."
In addition to AlcoholEdu for College, Immaculata is planning events to commemorate Alcohol Awareness Week in October and will provide Drug and Alcohol screening for students during the Spring semester. In addition, staff of the Student Affairs Office and Resident Assistants will attend BASICS (Brief Alcohol Screening in College Students) training before the semester begins.
In March 2005, the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse released new data suggesting that the problem of college drinking exceeds previous estimates, citing more than 1700 alcohol-related deaths and 2.8 million cases of driving under the influence in 2001. Previous estimates also suggest 500,000 injuries, 70,000 sexual assaults, and 159,000 first-year student dropouts due to alcohol and other drugs every year.
AlcoholEdu for College is an online, non-opinionated prevention program used on more than 450 campuses around the country. The program, which takes about 2 Â½ hours to complete, integrates proven prevention techniques into the science-based curriculum. It includes three confidential surveys which will provide success measures for the institution after students have completed it.
An independent, third-party evaluation of AlcoholEdu for College, undertaken by Andrew Wall, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, revealed that students who completed AlcoholEdu for Colleges experienced approximately 50% fewer negative health, social, and academic consequences than students who had not yet taken the course.
Immaculata University, a Catholic, coeducational institution, is located 20 miles west of Philadelphia, south of the intersection of routes 30 and 352, between Paoli and Exton.